Orange struggles to teach English to Hispanic kids

Kevin's journey

Hispanics, 32 percent of Orange's population, have altered the school system's landscape -- and its priorities.

December 20, 2010|By Erika Hobbs, Orlando Sentinel

Kevin Alonzo's eyes dart from his teacher to his paper. She points to the upper-right corner of her sheet, so he takes the cue and pencils in his name.

She circles her finger inside a box of letters, so he traces circles on his worksheet, too.

When she walks away, he looks at the jumble of black and white before him. He sees: My mother (blank) me inside for dinner.

Kevin reads aloud: Mi mamÃÂ¡ ...

Although the slight boy with gelled hair has mastered 200 key words he needs to survive sixth grade at Stonewall Jackson Middle School, the word list is not enough to bridge the chasm from Spanish to English.

So Kevin, who moved here from Honduras only two months ago, translates homework back to his native tongue to help him understand it.

The missing word -- called -- confounds him, but he figures it out by process of elimination, inserts it in the sentence and circles it in the word-search puzzle.

Then he jumps up, waving his sheet, a flag of triumph.

Another English word conquered. Thousands more to go.

"Me siento victorioso," he says. "Victorious," he repeats in a whisper.

'Civil-rights issue'

Kevin and thousands of kids like him represent an enormous challenge for Orange County's public-school educators as the district tries to emerge from a desegregation order that has regulated its day-to-day operations since 1964.

That case forced the district to end its dual educational system -- one for blacks and one for whites. But school leaders who have spent more than 45 years in the shadow of the federal courts now face an equally complex task to serve another minority group that has grown dramatically during the past two decades.

Orange's Hispanic population now tops 32 percent and, for the first time, is equal to the proportion of white, non-Hispanic students. Hispanics have radically changed the system's landscape -- and its priorities.

Their struggles -- poverty, angst, the race to keep up -- mirror those of many of their peers here and across the nation. But more than any other, one obstacle stands in the way of their academic progress: the English language.

Nearly 40 percent of Orange's Hispanic students do not speak English as a first language and must take intensive classes to learn it quickly to avoid failing in school.

It's a problem not just in Orange but across the nation, as well, prompting one federal official to call the education of children such as Kevin Alonzo the "civil-rights issue" of our time.

"If we are to turn things around in the education system, Hispanics are a key piece of that," said Ida Eblinger Kelley, director of Hispanic Outreach and Communications at the U.S. Department of Education.

Kelley, speaking at a conference this month for Orlando parents whose children speak other languages, noted that Hispanic students are the largest minority in schools but consistently lag in test scores, high-school graduation and college-entrance rates.

To meet that responsibility, teachers and administrators in the nation's 10th-largest school district are overhauling policies and strategies.

It's a daunting task, too, because these students must meet Florida's stringent academic standards and must pass a crucial test -- the FCAT -- that literally is foreign to many of them.

And it's taking a toll.

Last year, only 54 percent of Hispanic students in Orange County could read at grade level, compared with 76 percent of white non-Hispanics. Math performance was similar.

Of the district's English Language Learners -- most of whom speak Spanish -- only 48 percent can read at grade level.

In 2009, 76 percent of Hispanic students graduated from high school, compared with 85 percent of white non-Hispanics.

That same year, roughly half as many Hispanic students took honors or Advanced Placement classes as white non-Hispanics. And only 13 percent of Hispanic eighth-graders, for example, took algebra, while one-quarter of their white, non-Hispanic peers did.

No 'magic bullet'

Teachers and administrators acknowledge the problem, and they're as frustrated as anyone.

"Are we making substantial progress? No. Not as much as we would like," said Anna Diaz, Orange's associate superintendent of multilingual services. "We don't have the magic bullet yet."

She and others say they are fighting an uphill battle against balancing accountability, dwindling funds, an ever-changing set of standards and requirements, and a rapid-fire shift in the student population. Twenty years ago, Hispanics made up only 9 percent of enrollment.

"There are new kids moving in the system, new principals and teachers, and when you think you've educated everyone on what they need to know, it all changes again," she said.

The search for the right instructor is almost herculean. Officials cannot find enough Hispanic or Spanish-speaking teachers, or even those certified to teach English strategies. Only 12 percent of Orange's 12,000 teachers are Hispanic.